OGC Calls for Participation in ECO9 OGC Pilot

Wayland, MA, USA. December 22, 2008.

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) has issued a Request For Quotations and Call for Participation
(RFQ/CFP) to solicit proposals in response to requirements for the Empire Challenge 09 Pilot (EC09 OGC Pilot).

The EC09 OGC Pilot is sponsored by a US agency which will provide
cost-sharing funds to offset expenses associated with the initiative.
The sponsor and the OGC intend to involve as many participants in the
initiative as possible and thus are soliciting proposals that will
enhance and/or make use of the initiative outcomes. This RFQ/CFP is
soliciting partners to provide and deploy hardware / software for the
pilot network. Responses are due by January 14, 2009 and the Pilot
Kickoff Meeting will be held the week of 10-11 February 2009, in the
Washington, DC area. Technology deployments will be complete by July 17,
2009, followed by a two-week demonstration phase for the remainder of July.

The EC09 OGC Pilot will examine the suitability and performance of OGC
Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) and OGC Web Services (OWS) standards for
providing open management of and access to sensors of varied types and
Web service access by analysts to the resulting data and products.
Several use cases and supporting workflows are provided to enable
understanding of the design of the pilot. The use cases involve both
sensor management and exploitation by a targeting analyst.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 365 companies,
government agencies, research organizations, and universities
participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available
geospatial standards. OpenGIS Standards support interoperable solutions
that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and
mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make
geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any
application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website
at:

EC09 OGC Pilot RFQ/CFP Documents

EC09 OGC Pilot RFQ/CFP — Request for Quotation and Call For Participation in the EMPIRE CHALLENGE 09 PILOT (EC09 OGC PILOT ). "The EC09 OGC Pilot will build on the lessons and successes of the EC09 Pilot that examined the suitability and performance of OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) and OGS Web Services (OWS) implementations for providing open standard management of and access to sensors of varied types and web service access for analysts to the resulting data and products. Because of the linear nature of a multiple year demonstration cycle some documents needed to conduct this effort will be prepared by IP Team and furnished to the participants, and not created by the participants. These include the As-Built Architecture documentation from the EC08 effort that will serve as the architecture for EC09, designation of which OGC standards and versions will be used, designation of profiles of those standards where they are needed, designation of GML/XML schemas and provision of sample messages complete with appropriate data...

Annex A: EC09 OGC IP Work Breakdown Structure — "This document describes the EC09 OGC IP Work Breakdown Structure for this Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) / Web Services Initiative. The OGC Pilot for EC09 will be conducted with a contractual obligation to collaborate closely with the DIA Sensor Web Project that is funded by the same sponsor. It is expected that this collaboration will rely on Sensor Web for the provision of live sensors and work with the Distributed Common Ground Station - Army (DCGS-A) to enable our services to not only integrate with those from Sensor Web itself, but also to be exposed on the DCGS Interconnect Backbone (DIB)... We are particularly interested in any proposal to modify an existing system to make it either an OGC service or client. Adequate demonstration services exist for the Open Web Services (OWS) family, so we welcome proposals for the addition of SWE services for sensors provided by programs of record or deployment in the Global War on Terror. Sensors not in theater or on track to be there in the near future will be welcomed, but they will be lower in priority for cost sharing funding..."

Annex B: EC09 OGC Pilot Architecture — "The EC09 Pilot is specifically focused on implementation, test and demonstration of SOA patterns and standards-based Web services for geospatial data handling. The EC09 Pilot Architecture presented in this Annex is based upon the collaborative efforts of the EC09 Pilot Sponsors, OGC's IPTeam and participants of the EC08 Pilot Project. The EC09 Architecture described in this Annex will ultimately be realized through collaborative engineering activities executed as part of the EC09 Pilot Project... The EC08 Concept Architecture captures the essential architectural details of a to-be ISR architecture based on established SOA principles and OGC standards. The EC08 Concept Architecture cataloged a series of use cases that comprise the Operational Activity Model (OV-5) for the EC08 Pilot initiative. The use cases decomposed both the JP 3-60 deliberate adaptive targeting cycle and the popular Plan, Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess (P-F2T2EA) model for time-sensitive targeting. The use cases proved useful in identifying relevant actors, assumptions, activities, and typical activity sequences. This document references and builds on those use cases and the other key concepts elaborated in the EC08 Concept Architecture..."

Annex C: EC09 OGC Pilot Concept of Operations — "This Annex describes the Concept of Operations for the EC09 OGC Pilot. This document is organized around nine particular time frames or phases... Proposing organizations must be members of OGC, or must submit an application for membership and join if their proposals are accepted. The OpenGIS Abstract Specification, as well as OpenGIS Standards, will cover the technology areas under consideration in the RFQ. The relationship between the content of the proposal and the relevant OpenGIS Standards should be noted by the Proposing organizations. Proposing organizations should plan on performing all development work at their own facilities. These facilities should include a server (where applicable) that is accessible to other participants via the Internet. TIEs will be carried out among the participants based on these Internet-accessible servers. Proposing organizations shall plan to install their components at any of their own facilities for the OGC Network based pilot activities..."

OGC Web Services (OWS) in Support of the C4ISR Enterprise. EC08 Concept Architecture — "Empire Challenge (EC) affords the GEOINT community a valuable means to experiment with and validate promising technologies that have the potential to enrich and empower coalition C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) activities. EC08, scheduled for the summer of 2008 will feature a strong focus on integrated Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) operations in support of joint targeting, non-traditional ISR (NT-ISR), and multi-domain awareness (MDA). EC08 will also stress coalition information sharing, the growing role of Network Centric Enterprise Services (NCES), the dynamics of persistent surveillance, and a functional assessment of the family of Distributed Common Ground Stations (DCGS)... In addition to the common need to support delivery of data and services to end-users via Internet standards and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), the ?to-be? architecture must also specifically address a challenging set of organizational, operational and technical constraints that the ISR community operates within to fulfill the mission... This Concept Architecture is intended to provide system context for insertion, into the EC08 demonstration environment, of technologies that implement and support the NGA Spatial Data Infrastructure 1.0 (SDI 1.0) profile of OGC Web Services (OWS) specifications and the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) specifications..."

EC08 Pilot As-Built Architecture — "This document describes parts of the 'as-built' architecture as implemented, deployed and demonstrated for the OGC EC08 Pilot project that concluded during the Empire Challenge 2008 (EC08) demonstrations in July 2008. This document collects a series of architectural artifacts designed to describe key aspects of the EC08 Pilot, highlighting where open geospatial technology and standards can be leveraged toward the greatest gain... References are made throughout this document to the document that preceded it: the EC08 Concept Architecture 1 captures the essential architectural details of a to-be ISR architecture based on established SOA principles and OGC standards... The SV-1 Systems Interface Description represents a high level physical lay down of the system components deployed for the OGC EC08 Pilot, an initiative within the larger EC08 demonstration, specifically focused on implementation, test and demonstration of SOA patterns and standards-based Web services for geospatial data handling..."